From a bit further back, with the usual disclaimers...
First, the original study:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606692118/fulltext
Human rights abuse and other criminal violations in Port-au-Prince, Haiti: a random survey of households
Athena R Kolbe MSW & Dr Royce A Hutson PhD, The Lancet,
Summary
Background
Reliable evidence of the frequency and severity of human rights abuses in Haiti after the departure of the elected president in 2004 was scarce. We assessed data from a random survey of households in the greater Port-au-Prince area.
Methods
Using random Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinate sampling, 1260 households (5720 individuals) were sampled. They were interviewed with a structured questionnaire by trained interviewers about their experiences after the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The response rate was 90·7%. Information on demographic characteristics, crime, and human rights violations was obtained.
Findings
Our findings suggested that 8000 individuals were murdered in the greater Port-au-Prince area during the 22-month period assessed. Almost half of the identified perpetrators were government forces or outside political actors. Sexual assault of women and girls was common, with findings suggesting that 35 000 women were victimised in the area; more than half of all female victims were younger than 18 years. Criminals were the most identified perpetrators, but officers from the Haitian National Police accounted for 13·8% and armed anti-Lavalas groups accounted for 10·6% of identified perpetrators of sexual assault. Kidnappings and extrajudicial detentions, physical assaults, death threats, physical threats, and threats of sexual violence were also common.
Interpretation
Our results indicate that crime and systematic abuse of human rights were common in Port-au-Prince. Although criminals were the most identified perpetrators of violations, political actors and UN soldiers were also frequently identified. These findings suggest the need for a systematic response from the newly elected Haitian government, the UN, and social service organisations to address the legal, medical, psychological, and economic consequences of widespread human rights abuses and crime
Then, the Lancet editorial:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606692982/fulltext
UN peacekeepers in Haiti
6 months after democratic elections, Port-au-Prince has seen another upsurge in violence. Staff at Médicins Sans Frontières report treating more than 200 gunshot wounds in July, double the previous month's number of injuries. The fighting raises questions about the effectiveness of the UN peacekeeping mission, whose intermittent 15-year presence was extended for a further 6 months on Aug 15.
In today's Lancet, Athena Kolbe and Royce Hutson report human rights violations in Port-au-Prince. Central to their findings is the fact that civilian welfare fails to attract the attention it deserves from authorities in times of conflict, with neither the Haitian government, nor the UN peacekeepers being able to estimate the effect of the conflict on civilians. Yet in just 22 months—from the departure of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the end of 2005—an estimated 8000 people were murdered and 35 000 women sexually assaulted, half of whom were under the age of 18 years.
Most perpetrators were identified as criminals, but police, armed forces, paramilitaries, and foreign soldiers were also implicated. Although UN peacekeepers have been investigated for accusations of sexual misconduct in Haiti and elsewhere, Kolbe and Hutson's survey did not find evidence for their involvement in murder or sexual assault. However 14% of the interviewees did accuse foreign soldiers, including those in UN uniform, of threatening them with sexual or physical violence, including death.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has spoken out firmly against exploitative behaviour by UN peacekeepers. In 2005, at Annan's request, Prince Zeid of Jordan, whose soldiers serve in Haiti, proposed a number of measures to reduce sexual exploitation by UN personnel. One result has been the active investigation of allegations. Yet since 2004, only 17 peacekeepers have been dismissed and 161 repatriated out of 313 allegations worldwide. Annan's stand needs to be followed by stronger action to restore both international and local confidence, without which local security cannot be assured. Severely traumatised populations remain vulnerable, and as Kolbe and Hutson show, suffering does not stop when peacekeepers arrive. UN peacekeepers must no longer add to that suffering.
Finally, first MSM reference I've seen....
http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=232304ed-6900-4cf4-96d9-64eabd2f7b9a
Canadians threatened us: Haitians
Jeff Heinrich, Montreal Gazette, 2 Sept 06
Canadian troops with the United Nations in Haiti made death threats during house raids and made sexual threats against women while drunk and off-duty, according to Haitians interviewed as part of a meticulous human rights survey by U.S. researchers in December 2005 published Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet.
The study, which estimated that 8,000 Haitians have been murdered and 35,000 women and girls raped in Port-au-Prince alone since the ouster of then-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in early 2004, did not mention Canadians specifically, blaming only Brazilian and Jordanian troops for making threats.
But in an interview yesterday, the study's lead author said Haitians pinpointed Canadians as among those UN military personnel who threatened them physically or sexually.
"Canadians were definitely blamed for death threats and threats of physical and sexual violence," said Athena Kolbe, 30, an expert on Haiti who speaks Creole. She has visited Haiti often and is doing her master's degree at Wayne State University's School of Social Work, in Detroit.
One family was interviewed at their home in Delmas, an eastern suburb of the capital, Port-au-Prince.
"Canadian troops came to their house, and they said they were looking for (pro-Aristide) Lavalas chimeres, and threatened to kill the head of household, who was the father, if he didn't name names of people in their neighbourhood who were Lavalas chimeres or Lavalas supporters," Kolbe said by phone from San Francisco. "And he refused to, because, as he told us, he didn't know anyone."
How did he recognize the soldiers were Canadians? "From the flag on the uniform," Kolbe said.
How did he remember the incident so precisely? "Because the family was traumatized by it."
That incident was alleged to have taken place around the time of Aristide's departure in February 2004.
In another incident, "one woman said a Canadian soldier tried to have sex with her, that this soldier was drunk and she didn't want to, and that he was threatening her and grabbing at her when she didn't want to," Kolbe said.
The woman was out with her friends near a Canadian base, on a street where drunk and off-
duty Canadian soldiers in uniform tried to pick up local women.
Of the women in the peer-
reviewed study who complained of sexual threats, drunk and off-duty Canadian and U.S. soldiers were most often blamed, Kolbe said. "But regarding Brazilian and Jordanian troops, a lot of the sexual threats were actually when they were on patrol."
Canada sent 450 soldiers and other personnel along with six CH-146 Griffon helicopters to Haiti in March 2004 as part of a UN peacekeeping force of 6,700 military personnel and 1,600 police. The Canadian soldiers left in August of that year, but Canada still has 66 police officers in Haiti leading the UN's police force.
The Lancet survey - which questioned 5,720 randomly selected Haitians living in and around the capital about their lives in the 22 months since Aristide's fall - found that 97 said they had received death threats, 232 had been threatened physically and 86 sexually. One-third of the perpetrators were criminals, about 20 per cent were Haitian National Police and other government security agents, and another 20 per cent were foreign soldiers.
Most soldiers were identified by the flag displayed on their UN helmet or on their uniform sleeve over the upper arm. Other UN personnel were harder to identify by country; they had blue helmets but no flags.
The allegations of misconduct indicate that UN troops in Haiti need to be reined in, Kolbe said.
Canadians would likely have been more frequently cited if the study hadn't been restricted to the greater Port-au-Prince area, where Canadian troops patrol less than elsewhere in Haiti, Kolbe added.
Told of the allegations after Kolbe related them late yesterday afternoon, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence said they sounded specific and serious but needed verification before any comment could be made. "Is there any way that you could give us time to comment?" said Lt. Adam Thomson, asking publication of the allegations be delayed until after the Labour Day weekend.
Also in Ottawa yesterday, Rejean Beaulieu, the Foreign Affairs department spokesperson for Haiti, refused comment, offering instead only an off-the-record, not-for-attribution "deep background briefing" on Canada's role in Haiti.
Earlier, Beaulieu referred questions to the UN, which he said "should be in a better position to answer since our people in Haiti were and are working under this umbrella."
In Montreal, a spokesperson for Premier Jean Charest - who visited Haiti in June 2005 and received its controversial prime minister, Gerard Latortue, at his Montreal office last March - also declined comment. "The type of relationship we have with Haiti is through humanitarian projects," not peacekeeping or policing, which is Ottawa's jurisdiction, Hugo d'Amours said.
Ridiculous, retorted Marie-Dominik Langlois, co-ordinator of the Christian Committee for Human Rights in Latin America.
"There are lots of humanitarian projects in Haiti that only serve to legitimize so-called community leaders" who had a role in the undemocratic removal of Aristide, and Quebec is involved with them, she said.
But one Montreal Haitian community group took an opposite view.
"Impunity (from justice) reigns like a king in Haiti, but in my opinion things would be even worse without the UN presence," said Marjorie Villefranche, director of programs at the Maison d'Haiti, a St. Michel community centre founded in 1972 that serves some of the 70,000 Haitians here.
"There has been an acceleration of violence. But it's an acceleration caused by armed groups, not foreign soldiers. The real mistake was that the UN didn't disarm everyone when they arrived."
jheinrich@ thegazette.canwest.com